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Farm update - August 2014

The last month of winter and we have had some frosty mornings, not much rain and everything has turned brown.  We are feeding hay to the cows and we've booked the butcher for Romeo (the steer that we've had for about two years, not little Ruby in the photo below!).

I put my house cow ebook on lulu.com in ebook format, and on amazon for kindle, see my house cow ebook blog for more details about how to purchase the ebook in different formats.  It was also featured in this month's Grass Roots magazine and Small Farms magazine.  Now I'm thinking of writing another one (surely it won't take so long this time!) and I'd like to write about chicken tractors.  More details coming soon...

The ten pullets that we hatched in February and March have all start to lay, as well as the four extra laying hens that we bought, so we have plenty of extra eggs to sell.  The roosters are also big enough to butcher, but we need to empty the freezer to make room for Romeo, so they will have to wait a bit longer!  And I managed to sell the guinea fowl, they were lovely, but they didn't fit into our homestead, as they would not go back to their cage after free-ranging.  I'm glad we tried them, but I was also glad to see them go to another home.

I wrote about my garden here.  I'm going to sort out my seed collection and organise a seed swap soon, so check back at the next garden share to join in.

I was making slow progress with my alpaca shawl, so I had a break to knit some quick arm-warmers instead.  I knitted them on 4 double pointed needles, and it was nice to just go round and round in knits and not have to think about passing slipped stitches over!  I will post the instructions soon.

Here's a few interesting blogs for August:
Doing it for ourselves
Five little homesteaders

How was your July?  What are you planning for August?











Comments

  1. My July was dry too. 11 mm total here. Plenty of cold frosty mornings took care of my growing tomatoes through winter experiment. August is harvesting and eating winter veggies and buying seeds and getting ready for Spring.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe a greenhouse for the tomatoes next year? Or not worth the bother? They really don't like frost!

      Delete
  2. Shame about the Guinea Fowl, they are such pretty birds. At least you gave it a go. T x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really like them, but teaches me not to buy animals because I like the way they look!

      Delete
  3. I can feel summer in the air so I am getting myself organised. Taz is so cute with her stick. Jessie loves to run around a wrestle her sticks. Cheryl looks like she will not be giving up her toy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She is waiting for Taz to play tug of war with her, but no, she won't put it down!

      Delete

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